Oil, gas and coal development on public lands is a bad deal for U.S. taxpayers. @bberwyn photo.

Staff Report

The as-yet barely checked use of fossil fuels is rapidly disrupting the global climate and to add insult to injury, taxpayers around the world are supporting the damage with huge subsidies, as well as tax breaks and loopholes.

The EPA’s Clean Power Plan page is now an anti-science propaganda page of the Trump administration.

U.S. policy in turmoil as Bonn climate summit approaches

Staff Report

The future of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan is still up in the air, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has put a hold on legal proceeding pending the new administration’s review. The Clean Power Plan developed under the Obama administration would require modest cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from power plants with the goal of meeting global targets to cap global warming.

“This decision is disappointing but still leaves key issues about the future of the Clean Power Plan to be resolved,” said David Doniger, director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We will continue to fight in the D.C. Circuit and in the court of public opinion to ensure that the government fulfills its legal obligation to protect the public from climate change. Continue reading “Federal court pauses Clean Power Plan case”→

Environmental protections are under attack on every front and the far North is no exception. Alaska’s senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both Republicans, appear willing to risk fragile ocean environments for a few more petrodollars, so they’ve opportunistically introduced a bill that would expand oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean and Cook Inlet, where a recent gas leak persisted for several months, according to InsideClimate News.

Senate Bill 883 seeks to reverse protections established by President Obama in Dec. 2016 and force the Department of the Interior to quickly approve new oil and gas leasing.

“It’s not possible to drill safely in the Arctic, as we just saw from the leaking oil and gas well on the North Slope,” said Miyoko Sakashita, ocean programs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This legislation’s nothing more than a giveaway to oil companies. It’ll hurt Alaska’s healthy habitat and endangered wildlife.” Continue reading “Alaska’s senators want more offshore drilling in Arctic waters”→

States stretching from Texas to New York were record warm in February.

Staff Report

Nearly a quarter of the U.S. was record warm in February, and nationwide, it ended up as the second-warmest February on record, just behind 1954. The winter (December to February) was the sixth-warmest, according to the latest State of the Climate update from the National Centers for Environmental Information.

By the numbers, the average temperature across the lower 48 states for Februrary was 41.2 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 7.3 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average. The winter as a whole (December to February) was 3.7 degrees Fahrenheit above average.

The only state reporting widespread below-average temperatures was Washington, with slightly below to near average readings in Oregon, Northern California, northern Idaho and Montana.

By contrast, 16 states, stretching from Texas up the Mississippi Valley to the Midwest, New York and the central Atlantic Coast, were record warm. Three states, including Colorado, reported their all-time warmest minimum average temperatures, in line with global warming trends showing nighttimes heating faster than days.

According to the report, there were 11,743 daily warm temperature records broken or tied, compared to 418 daily cold records. Of those, 1,151 daily records also broke the warmest temperature record ever observed during February, compared to just 2 cold records.

The U.S. February temperatures are in line with the rest of world, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, which reported earlier this week that the average global temperature for February was the second-warmest on record.

All eyes are on wind and solar these days, and rightly so, but ocean waves may play an even bigger role in humanity’s efforts to decarbonize energy production. Scientists and engineers in the Pacific Northwest may get a chance to show how that can happen with a new wave energy test facility in Newport, Oregon.

Last month, Oregon State University’s Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center today was awarded up to $40 million from the U.S. Department of Energy for the Pacific Marine Energy Center South Energy Test Site, which should be operational by 2020. It will be able to test wave energy “converters” that harness the energy of ocean waves and turn it into electricity. Companies around the world are already anticipating construction of the new facility to test and perfect their technologies, OSU officials say. Continue reading “Can wave power help de-carbonize the world?”→

State officials hope to be well-prepared for the next inevitable drought in Colorado.

Soil moisture, snowpack data help inform new forecast modeling

Staff Report

Some droughts creep up on you, while others seem to come out of nowhere, like in 2012 when spring came early and a hot, dry summer parched fields and forests and led to a busy wildfire season, including the destructive Waldo Canyon blaze near Colorado Springs.

Seasonal forecasts issued in May 2012 did not foresee a drought forming in the country’s midsection. But by the end of August, the drought had spread across the Midwest, parching Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri. Now, after analyzing conditions leading up to the drough, researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, say similar droughts in the future could be predicted by paying close attention to key indicators like snowmelt and soil moisture. Continue reading “Study eyes ‘flash drought’ forecasts”→

This year’s meteorological summer in the contiguous U.S. (June-August) will go down in the climate annals as the fifth-warmest on record, at 2.8 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average.

The year-to-date is the third-warmest on record, with Alaska on pace for a record-warm year after eight months, according to NOAA’s monthly State of the Climate summary, available here. August was the 17-warmest on record, with record warmth in the Northeast, and below average temperatures in the Southwest.

After record rain storms in parts of the Midwest and along the Gulf Coast, August ended up as the second wettest on record.

For the summer, according to NOAA, every state across the contiguous U.S., had a statewide temperature that was above average. Twenty-nine states across the West and in the East were much warmer than average for the summer. California, Connecticut and Rhode Island each had their warmest summer on record.

Alaska observed its second warmest summer in its 92-year record at 53.6°F, 3.0°F above average. Only the summer of 2004 was warmer with a statewide temperature value of 55.9°F. Several locations across the state were record warm including Anchorage, Kenai, King Salmon and Yakutat.